I really enjoyed the first chapter
of this piece immensely. This article was an accumulation of a few of my
passions regarding teaching. It touched upon allowing the students to decide
what they would be learning based on their interests and prior knowledge. It
also talked about how important participation in the world is in helping
students know first-hand how their help makes a difference. It talks about encourages
students to become empowered by asking questions and seeking out the answers.
By standing up for what they believe and fighting for the change that will give
them what they deserve. Liberation is as praxis: the action and reflection of
people upon their world in order to transform it” (Shor, 33)

The tools we need in order to empower
our students have been given to us this semester has we read through the
articles each week and then blogged about them. As I read through this article
I kept stumbling upon connections with all of the texts we had read. Some had
one more than one author that related to the passage but here I just put down
the author that came to mind first. I flagged them and will share them here:

·August’s “Creating Safe Spaces: “Our
role as teachers is to create a safe environment in which students can express
opinions and most importantly, generate their own language materials for
learning and peer-teaching” (Shor, 43).

August’s Advocacy &
Protection: “From a critical point of view, existing cannons
of knowledge and usage are not a common culture; they have ignored the multicultural
themes, idioms and achievements of non-elite groups such as woman, minorities,
homosexuals and working people.

·Christensen’s Media Control: “The hostile
reception in the mass media and in academic circles in the United States to
feminist and multicultural studies since the 1960’s exemplifies the political nature
of apparently neutral knowledge” (Shor, 34).

·Collier’s “Code-Switching”: “As
writing teachers to Afro-Caribbean students, they taught the community idiom,
Creole and standard English simultaneously. They did not install white English
as the preferred idiom in the classroom. Instead they developed bilingual
literacy and a political awareness of the relationship between the dominant and
the community languages” (Shor, 48).

Collier’s Acceptance of Home Language: “Their
class in Creole and standard English is an example of multicultural language
arts seeking a critical and democratic balance between community speech and the
dominant usage, without denying either” (Shor, 50)

·Delpit’s “Rules and Codes of Power”: “As
conscious human beings, we can discover how we are conditioned by the dominant
ideology. We can gain distance on our moment of existence…we can struggle free precisely
because we know we aren’t free! That is why we can think of transformation.
Human beings are capable of overcoming limits if they can openly examine them.
The participatory class offers that possibility” (Shor, 22-23)

Delpit’s “Rules and Codes of
Power”: “Most kids like the sound of their home language better…we talk about
why it might be necessary to learn standard English…asking my students to
memorize the rules without asking who makes the rules, who enforces the rues,
who benefits from the rules, who loses from the rules…legitimates a social
system that devalues my students’ knowledge and language” (Shor, 53).

·Johnston’s “Say the Words”: “Politics
reside not only in subjects matter but in the discourse of the classroom; in
the way teachers and students speak to each other. The rules for talking are a
key mechanism for empowering or disempowering students” (Shor, 14).

·Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn From You Technique”: “Many
students do not like the knowledge, process or rules set out for them in class.
In reaction, they drop out or withdraw into passivity or silence in the
classroom. Some become self-educated; some sabotage the curriculum by misbehaving”
(Shor, 14).

Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn From You Technique”: The
Performance Strike: Until students experience lively participation, mutual
authority and meaningful work, they will display depr4essed skills and knowledge,
as well as negative emotions. Teachers will be measuring and reacting to an artificially
low picture of student abilities” (Shor, 21)

Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn From You Technique”: “The authoritarian
traditional curriculum itself generate bad feelings with lead many students to
resist or sabotage the lessons” (Shor, 24)

Kohl’s “I Won’t Learn From You Technique”: Some
follow instructions, others go around them; some manipulate the teacher; still
others undermine the class. In such an environment, many students become
cynical, identifying intellectual life with dullness and indignity” (Shor, 26).

·Kohn’s “Manipulating Children”: “Education
can socialize students into critical through or into dependence on authority,
that is, into autonomous habits of mind into passive habits of following authorities,
waiting to be told what to do and what things mean” (Shor, 13).

Kohn’s “Reducing Achievement”: “The
typical classroom is framed by competition. Star charts on the wall announce who
has been successful at learning…competition encourages people to survey other
people’s differences for potential weak spots” (Shor, 23-24)

·Kozol’s The Poor Remain Poor Theory: “School
funding is another political dimension of education, because more money had
always been invested in the education of upper-class children and elite
collegians than has been spent on students from lower-income homes and in
community college” (Shor, 15).

·Kozol’s Stereotyping Theory: “Low
status traditionally ascribed to everyday language…the medium of expression of
those colonized was always viewed by the colonists as something inferior, ugly,
poverty-stricken, incapable for example of conveying scientific or
technological ideas, as if languages did not change historically in step with
actual developments in the forces of production” (Shor, 52).

McIntosh’s Privileges: “Instead
of blaming themselves, they learned that the problem of doing well in school is
a problem of an unequal society that devalues the idiom spoken by ordinary
people” (Shor, 53)

·Westheimer’s Reflecting Upon Service Learning: “Piaget
says ‘Knowledge is derived from action…to know an object is to act upon it and
to transform it…to know is therefore to assimilate reality into structures of
transformation and these are the structures that intelligence constructs as a
direct extension of our actions.’ With a Deweyan emphasis, Piaget reiterated
that we learn by doing and thinking
about our experience” (Shor, 17).

Other than all the quotes I listed above, I found
six more that really stood out for me that I will continue to discuss here. They
touched upon everything from empowerment to reflecting to participating to
keeping an open mind in order to accept differences and things we at first don’t
understand. These are all key elements in teaching in my opinion. “Schools need
to be defended as an important public service that educates students to be
critical citizens who can think, challenge, take risks and believe that their
actions will make a difference in a larger society” (Shor 16).

The aspect I have always struggled with the most is
that balance between teaching what I think is right whilst not enforcing my
beliefs on my students, instead encouraging them to think and feel for
themselves. “By limiting creative and critical questioning, the banking model
makes education into an authoritarian transfer instead of a democratic
experience. Any material imposed by authority as doctrine stops being knowledge
and becomes dogma. Critical learning and democratic education end where
orthodoxy begins” (Shor, 34).

“In the social setting of education, passive curricula
help prepare students for life in undemocratic institutions. Students do not
practice democratic habits in co-governing their classroom, schools or
colleges. There, they learn that unilateral authority is the normal way things
are done in society. They are introduced in school to the reality of management
holding dominant unelected power. At the same time they are told that they live
in freedom and democracy” (Shor, 19). The rules and code of power keep the
students opinions at bay. They are taught that their needs and thoughts do not
matter. This is why it’s so important to run a democratic classroom, where we
can show our students that their voice doe sin fact matter greatly.

“To help move students away from passivity and
cynicism, a powerful signal has to be sent from the very start, a signal that
learning is participatory, involving humour, hope and curiosity. A strong
participatory and affective opening broadcasts optimistic feelings about the
students’ potential and about the future; students are people whose voices are
worth listening to, whose minds can carry the weight of serious intellectual
work, whose thought and feeling can entertain transforming self and society” (Shor,
26) This is important because we must allow students to know how much their opinions
matter. They must be taught that their voice is powerful and needs to be used.
By having open discussion forums in class, they can feel the rush and
excitement of adding to the conversation!

I would like to sum up this piece with two quotes. I’ll reward you with a video and the middle. “People
begin life as motivated learners, not as passive beings. Children naturally join
the world around them. They learn by interacting, by experimenting and by using
play to internalize the meaning of words and experience. Language intrigues
children; they have needs they want met; they busy the older people in their
lives with questions and requests for show me, tell me. But year by year their
dynamic learning erodes in passive classrooms not organized around their
cultural backgrounds, conditions or interests. Their curiosity and social instincts
decline until many become nonparticipants” (Shor, 17). This touched me so
deeply because I have always subscribed to the theory that children know more
than we could ever know. They are so much wiser than we are because they are
untainted by society still. They still believe in their hopes and dreams and
goodness and Santa Claus. Then we slowly strip away their confidence and
passion for play and life. They do love to learn, they want to learn and grow
much more so than most adults. So why not allow them to?

This video of Sir Ken Robinson speaking on Changing Education Paradigms, edited and drawn by the RSA team plays to the
very themes in the above quote. It also touches upon all of the issues brought
up in this piece as well as lots of other pressing education issues like the
lack of the arts, creativity and the old industrial revolution format of our
education system. It’s only eleven minutes long. Please watch it. Robinson is funny, smart, witty and
passionate about what we all care about.

The last thing I’d like to share (I
know I’m dragging it out, it’s our final blog post after all!) is a quote from
this piece which I refer to as the holy grail. This is why knowledge
is power and why it’s so important that we how our students that they have
the power to make great change! “Knowledge has always been a place where forces
contend for power, as Galileo discovered in his conflicts with the Vatican, as
slaveholders in the American south understood when they made it illegal to
teach slaves to read or write and as the Bush White House demonstrated when it imposed
strict censorship on the coverage of the Gulf War. In no society is knowledge a
neutral terrain. Because some groups in history have had the power to establish
standard knowledge and standard usage, these canons need to be studied
critically, not absorbed as a bogus common culture” (Shor, 34-35). Food for
thought indeed!

Questions For Class:

·The aspect I have always struggled with the most is
that balance between teaching what I think is right whilst not enforcing my
beliefs on my students, instead encouraging them to think and feel for
themselves. What are some ways that I can use in order to not allow my passion
to persuade others to believe what I do while still sharing what I believe is
right to encourage them to do what’s right?

This is a great post! I started keeping track of the connections too after I noticed a few, and as reflected in your list of quotes, I think just about every previous reading appeared. I really like your statement: "This touched me so deeply because I have always subscribed to the theory that children know more than we could ever know. They are so much wiser than we are because they are untainted by society still." This is so true. Young kids are so eager, observant, honest, and have no filter -- which is one of the things I've enjoyed about my placement with kindergarteners. If only we could keep them unjaded forever! Shor's idea of an empowering education could help do just that.

Your blog post this week was (as always) super informative. I haven't read the article yet but reading your post has helped me prepare. I love how you used to quotes to relate to all past authors. The video you used was awesome. I want to look up more information by that Sir Ken Robinson, I think his ideas about education are really on point!

I have to agree with Chelsea. I love coming over to your blog posts. This weeks article was tough for me to get through so my first thought was to come to your blog. :) Thanks for clearing a few things up for me!

About Me

I live in New England where we get all four seasons and where the colours change throughout the year!

I love all of the arts; music, dance, theatre, paintings, photography & writing! I love to read books, teach and learn; ancora imparo (Latin for I am still learning)! I love to watch films and listen to music most of all. I am obsessed with colour and music is my life! I love kid things like watching cartoons and the Disney Channel! I have been an Anglophile since I was little! I love walking while taking in the nature around us! I am a tree hugger quite literally! I love Story People, Jane Austen and Young Adult Books. I love New York City and Lighthouses. My hobbies are singing, writing, reading, walking, collaging, cake decorating, and just simply creating.

I am currently a full-time student in college studying Secondary English Education. I want to teach English literature and writing to high school aged young adults while incorporating all of the arts into my lessons because they are where students can create for themselves. I worry as the art seem to be disappearing rapidly from the curriculum. I also work part time!